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Sunday, June 04, 2006

About a month ago I tested eo running the only benchmark tool that has been optimized to use the potential of VIA processors, OSMark. From the results I got and the comparison with the results from a Q1 it was clear that the only point where the VIA was a lot better than Intel processors was Encrypting and Decrypting.

But Yesterday CarryPad insinuated that probably in the real world this potential was not being used either.

So why would VIA create a chipset that can't be fully utilised under Windows? Is it because the largest percentage of their sales is for embedded devices running Linux? I suggest that they need to put a bit more effort into getting C7/VN800 drivers and/or code out to software developers ASAP otherwise the VIA-based UMPC's are going to continue to look half-finished. We haven't even started to test the encryption capabilities (AES, SHA, RSA acceleration) of the chipset which are hugely superior to Intel-based processors. If the same issue occurs with encryption, I'm buying a Q1!

Thinking about this comment and having tested a tool called TrueCrypt, a program that allows users to create an encrypted drive using free space from your hard drive, I ran the benchmark option that comes with that program and here are the results in this screen shot:

Then I asked for help Q1 owners running the same option and here is the screenshot from a Q1:

Comparing these two screen shots you can see that the Q1 got better results in all tests. And no just better results but almost double of the speed.

Now, my question is: for what's good VIA processor if nobody is programming for this processor? Can anyone from VIA gives me just one reason why I should recommend this processor to my clients? Ah... because it's cheap? Well, AMD are cheaper and work a lot better than VIA.

I tested about 7 years ago a Cyrux processor and from that experience I never bought neither recommended these processors to anybody. 7 years later I have tested another processor from VIA and so far the only thing good that I have found is the potential of getting a good Battery life and even on this point VIA has failed because they could not deliver to the market a properly configured device. If I was Martin Smekal, CEO of TabletKiosk, I would ask VIA why I should keep using these I-DONT-KNOW-FOR-WHAT-THEY-ARE-GOOD processors?

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